Green Bay Area Public School District

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The Players

Serving more than 20,000 students, the Green Bay Area Public School District includes four high schools, five middle schools, 26 elementary schools and one community school. Like all public entities faced with tighter operating budgets, the District was under mandate to reduce its total energy consumption.

Beginning in 2003, the District launched an aggressive program combining energy-saving projects with student and employee awareness instruction. In just five years, it saved nearly 19.8 million kWh of electricity, 2.3 million therms of natural gas and $4.4 million in public funds. Millions of pounds of coal and natural gas were conserved, and more than 71 million pounds of CO2 emissions were prevented from entering the atmosphere. With Automated Logic building control systems now installed in nearly half of all schools as well as the administrative office building, the District’s efforts have helped make Green Bay a greener place to live, work and learn.

The Solution

“The District began with a number of objectives – reduced energy consumption, improved air quality, cost savings, system integration and expandability, etc. It first chose Automated Logic for an elementary school and three high schools, all major renovation projects, for two key reasons – installation costs and the ease of use of WebCTRL®, our web-based building automation system,” said Scott Richard, ALC-Wisconsin Senior Sales Engineer.

“Getting the facility operators trained was an initial challenge, but we accomplished that by working with Jeff Christens, responsible for the District’s DDC systems, who in turn has continued to train personnel,” added Jeff Jarolimek, Senior Project Engineer.

Over the years, the District has instituted a number of conservation strategies including building pre-cooling, setpoint optimization, boiler modulation and demand reduction (with support from Focus on EnergySM, the state’s public-private energy information and services partnership, Christens piloted a demand-limiting chiller control strategy at one school that was implemented at six others). Hallway lighting is set to class schedules, and classroom lighting is controlled by occupancy sensors.

One “star” of the District’s program has been Danz Elementary School. Ranked by Focus on Energy to be in the lowest 20 percent in the state for heating and cooling efficiency (as determined by usage per square foot for building type), the school surged to the top 5 percent following its Automated Logic retrofit. Before, Danz operated at one of the highest cost-per-square-foot within the District; it now operates at the District’s lowest.

“We continue to modify control sequences for all of the equipment at all of our installations. And with Automated Logic’s EIKON® LogicBuilder, a programming tool used to create, test and verify control logic, we’re able to try out any sequence we can think of,” Christens added.

Christens is also pleased with the savings and the ease of use that WebCTRL provides.

“We’re authorized for unlimited users with no licensing fees,” he explained. “There’s no special software required, and we can view everything through Internet Explorer® on any PC.

“We have full access to the software and can see down to the program, so we can troubleshoot in a matter of minutes. Finding the cause of a problem is reduced to a fraction of the time compared to other systems. And by keeping energy management functions in-house, the District has saved thousands more in outsourced energy consulting and maintenance fees,” he added. Indeed, Automated Logic has helped make Green Bay significantly greener – in every sense of the word.

The Story

The building automation/energy management solutions provider didn’t stop there. “We calculated the potential energy savings with a switch-out to low e-glass on the building’s shell,” remarked Automated Logic - Virginia’s Kristy Schomaker, Energy Advisor, LEED AP O+M. Building owners authorized the project, and the glass was completely replaced over a 10-month period ending July 2009. Improvements both inside and out have resulted in significant cost savings and more efficient use of energy. With occupied space up 50 percent, energy costs were nevertheless reduced 18 percent, saving $130,475 over a recent 12-month period. Building maintenance has considerably improved as well. “From the manual side of operations, [WebCTRL®] works wonders for me,” remarked Chief Engineer Cas Bradshaw. “I don’t have to physically go to all of the mechanical and control equipment locations, but can check on system operations from a single screen.”

“The three most difficult challenges in any high-rise office building are HVAC, elevators and janitorial. Without an adequate building automation system, WyteStone Plaza was impossible to control,” added Bob Waldrop, C.P.E., Vice President of Richmond for W.J. Vakos. “Now, it’s like putting an HVAC mechanic in every location – and they’re talking to each other! “In the past, we couldn’t react as quickly – the building is on a north-south axis, and winters had been a particular problem,” Waldrop continued. “Now, we can make adjustments before the tenants even know and keep costs down [Automated Logic - Virginia’s Guss also noted WebCTRL’s ability to support quick response to any system alarms]. Complaints have dropped, and everything is easier,” Waldrop concluded.